Stephen E. Jones

Projects: "Problems of Evolution" (Outline): 4. History (3)

[Home] [Site map] [Updates] [Projects] [Contents; 1. Introduction; 2. Philosophy (1), (2), (3), (4) & (5); 3. Religion (1) & (2); 4. History (1) & (2); 5. Science; 6. Environment (1), (2) & (3); 7. Origin of life (1), (2) & (3); 8. Cell & Molecular (1), (2) & (3); 9. Mechanisms (1), (2) & (3); 10. Fossil Record; 11. `Fact' of Evolution; 12. Plants; 13. Animals; 14. Man (1) & (2); 15. Social; 16. Conclusion; Notes; Bibliography A-C, D-F, G-I, J-M, N-S, T-Z]

"PROBLEMS OF EVOLUTION": 4. HISTORY (3)
1.	Evolution's historical roots
2.	Ancients
3.	Pre-Darwinians
4.	Darwin
	1.	Darwin
	2.	Darwin's method
		1.	Adjusted the facts to fit his theory
	3.	Darwin's theory
		1.	Primary objective religious, not scientific
		2.	Natural selection
			1.	Natural selection's power read into nature
		3.	Speciation
			1.	Darwin never explained the origin of species by natural  selection
			2.	Sympatric speciation

	4.	Darwin's success
		1.	Factors in Darwinism's success
			1.	Revolt against God
		2.	Darwin's dishonesty
			1.	Darwin is inseparable from the modern theory of evolution
			2.	Darwin falsely claimed to have never encountered before 1859 even one naturalist who doubted the permanence of species
			3.	Darwin's plagiarism
				1.	Darwin plagiarised Wallace's theory
			4.	Darwin proposed an impossible `test' of his theory
		3.	Darwin's use of rhetoric
		4.	Darwin's obsessiveness
		5.	Darwin's manipulation of people
		6.	Darwin's manipulation of the media
		7.	Darwin's manipulation of science
		8.	Darwinism's unfalsifiability
		9.	Lack of naturalistic alternatives
		10.	Bandwagon effect
		11.	Exclusion of rivals
5.	Darwinism
	1.	An ideology
6.	Eclipse of Darwinism
	1.	Bateson
7.	Neo-Darwinism
	1.	Based on irrelevant mathematical theory
	2.	Achieved success by eliminating rivals
	2.	Scopes trial
8.	Post-Darwinism
	1.	Macroevolution not microevolution
9.	Anti-Darwinism

"PROBLEMS OF EVOLUTION": 4. HISTORY (3)

4.	Darwin
	1.	Darwin
	2.	Darwin's method
		1.	Adjusted the facts to fit his theory
There is an even better example of how Darwin adjusted the facts to fit his theory, and not the other way round, 
in his candid admission that the fossil record must be "poor" because "the absence of innumerable transitional 
links ... pressed so hardly on [his] theory." 

"But I do not pretend that I should ever have suspected how poor was the record in the best preserved 
geological sections, had not the absence of innumerable transitional links between the species which lived at the 
commencement and close of each formation, pressed so hardly on my theory." (Darwin C.R., "The Origin of 
Species by Means of Natural Selection," [1872], Everyman's Library, J.M. Dent & Sons: London, 6th Edition, 
1928, reprint, p.311)
	3.	Darwin's theory
		1.	Primary objective religious, not scientific
"From his notebooks and his correspondence, and less distinctly in his publications, it appears that Darwin's 
primary goal was to oppose Creationism" (Lovtrup, 1987, p.402). In fact Darwin later admitted that his 
primary objective in his Origin of Species, was religious (i.e. anti-creation), and his 
secondary objective was scientific: "I had two distinct objects in view; firstly, to shew that 
species had not been separately created, and secondly, that natural selection had been the chief agent of 
change" (Darwin, 1871, p.92. My emphasis).

"Charles Darwin's hostile preoccupation with the belief that God had separately and individually created each of 
the animal and plant species in the world is one of the most intriguing but neglected features of the Origin of 
Species. Historians have disagreed about what to make of it. ... Some have accused Darwin of setting up a straw 
man in order to improve the appearance of his own case. Lastly, there are those who believe, correctly I think, 
that Darwin's rejection of special creation was part of the transformation of biology into a positive science, one 
committed to thoroughly naturalistic explanations based on material causes and the uniformity of the laws of 
nature ... Darwin, then, was not engaged in anachronistic shadowboxing, but had selected his target well and 
knew exactly what he was doing. His attack on special creation was a response to the crisis and an attempt to 
resolve it by helping to promote the restructuring of biology along positivist lines. The critique of special creation 
in the Origin was systematically organized to that end." (Gillespie, 1979, pp.19-20)

For example, in "Darwin's discussion of the apparently erratic egg-laying habits of American 'ostriches' 
(rheas) and cowbirds (Molothrus bonariensis) ... He is trying to show a gradation in parasitism from the rheas 
at one end, through to the cowbirds, right up to the well-honed parasitic instincts of the European cuckoo 
(Peckham 1959, pp. 390-6). This is a standard Darwinian procedure; such gradations provide models for 
how natural selection could have acted. But it is the 'imperfection' displayed along this gradation that most 
interests Darwin, for this suggests that deliberate design has not been at work. The cowbirds' habits are 'far 
from perfect' he says (Peckham 1959, p. 395). They lay their eggs in foster nests in such large numbers that 
most must be lost; they waste eggs by dropping them on the bare ground; and they sometimes start to build 
very inadequate nests, which they don't complete or use. Such imperfection, Darwin says delightedly, is 
enough to turn even a creationist into an evolutionist ... Rather than trying to show how natural selection 
compensates for the damages, Darwin triumphantly writes them off as imperfection unworthy of a designer. 
... he is more interested in evidence of imperfection than in explaining how natural selection could allow the 
rhea to develop such profligate reproductive habits." (Cronin, 1991, p.68).
But ironically, "Darwinism needed ... to account for variation adaptively, and finding too many imperfect 
adaptations could come perilously close to scoring an own goal. After all, to lose one egg may be regarded as 
a misfortune; to lose many looks like carelessness, more carelessness than natural selection would tolerate" 
(Cronin, 1991, p.69). And this "scoring an own goal" (i.e. kicking a goal for the opposing side) is a 
problem for Darwinism's argument for "imperfection unworthy of a designer". While this may indeed have 
scored goals against an over-enthusiastic 18-19th century natural theology, the Bible itself makes no claim 
for perfect design. Indeed, the Bible notes that there is imperfect design, ironically in the case of the 
ostrich: Job 39:13-17, "The wings of the ostrich flap joyfully, but they cannot compare with the pinions and 
feathers of the stork. She lays her eggs on the ground and lets them warm in the sand, unmindful that a foot 
may crush them, that some wild animal may trample them. She treats her young harshly, as if they were not 
hers; she cares not that her labor was in vain, for God did not endow her with wisdom or give her a share of 
good sense" (Hunter, 2001, p.93). The Bible locates the design more at ecosystem level, (e.g. Ps 
104:24-28), than in the individual organism, where a disadvantage in one area may be compensated for by an 
advantage in another. For example, continuing in Job 39:18, "Yet when she [the ostrich] spreads her feathers 
to run, she laughs at horse and rider".

And indeed, in the case of "the well-honed parasitic instincts of the European cuckoo", if "such gradations 
provide models for how natural selection could have acted," and there is "'imperfection' displayed along this 
gradation," thwn this is evidence that natural selection, which Darwin claimed "is daily and hourly scrutinising, 
throughout the world, the slightest variations; rejecting those that are bad, preserving and adding 
up all that are good; silently and insensibly working, whenever and wherever opportunity offers, at the 
improvement of each organic being in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life" (Darwin, 1872, 
p.84. My emphasis), is correspondingly weaker. If it is an argument against perfect design (which the Bible does not 
even claim), that "When the eggs that cuckoos lay in the nests of other birds hatch, the cuckoo chick proceeds to 
push the eggs of its foster parents out of the nest" (Hull, 1991, p.486), then one might ask, why, if natural 
selection is supposed to be "a shaping agent at least as powerful as a deity," which it needs to be "to explain the 
sort of complex multidimensional adaptation ... the 'Paley's watch', or 'Organs of extreme Perfection and complication', 
kind of adaptation" (Dawkins, 1982a, p.108), and feeding another bird's chicks, at the expense of one's 
own, is such an obvious Darwinian disadvantage to the host species, that only one species of bird, "the 
superb fairy-wren" has "evolved the ability to recognize the cuckoo chick for what it is" (Yoon, 2003; 
Derbyshire, 2003)? [top]

		2.	Natural selection
			1.	Natural selection's power read into nature
Darwin also later let slip that natural selection was something that he gave "power" to: "if I have 
erred in giving to natural selection great power ... or in having exaggerated its power, which is in itself 
probable" (Darwin, 1871, p.92). That is, the power of natural selection is something Darwin read 
into nature, not something that Darwin read out nature! [top] 

		3.	Speciation
			1.	Darwin never explained the origin of species by natural selection 
Darwin "formulated a variety of other ingenious and plausible speculations on how and why the relentless 
culling of natural selection would actually create species boundaries, *but they remain speculations to this 
day*. ... Controversy about the mechanisms and principles of speciation still persists, so in one sense *neither 
Darwin nor any subsequent Darwinian has explained the origin of species*. As the geneticist Steve Jones 
(1993) has remarked, had Darwin published his masterpiece under its existing title today, `he would have 
been in trouble with the Trades Description Act because if there is one thing which Origin of Species is not 
about, it is the origin of species.'" (Dennett, 1995, p.44; Jones, 1993. My emphasis). [to be continued] [top]

			2.	Sympatric speciation
"Darwin proposed ... that competition between closely related forms would be a driving force in speciation," 
that "speciation got under way within a population ... in a form of sympatric speciation" (Dennett, 1995, 
p.296). That is, "reproductive isolation without prior geographic isolation" (Mader 1990, p.325); where "new 
species arise within the range of parent populations" (Campbell, 1999, p.452). Darwin's ... "notion of 
sympatric continuity" was "the purest form of Darwinian gradualism" (Gould, 1980a, p.122). "As far as 
speciation is concerned ... Darwin was somewhat confused ... Although supporting geographic speciation on 
islands, Darwin believed in a widespread occurrence of sympatric speciation on continents" (Mayr, 1988, 
p.192; Mayr, 1991, p.163).

Even though the term "sympatric speciation" did not exist in Darwin's day, Darwin repeatedly emphasised 
that, under his theory of The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, the "Struggle for life [would 
be] most severe between individuals and varieties of the some species" (Darwin, 1872, p.66); "But the 
struggle will almost invariably be most severe between the individuals of the same species, for they frequent 
the same districts, require the same food, and are exposed to the same dangers." (Darwin, 1872, p.77). "As 
the species of the same genus usually have, though by no means invariably, much similarity in habits and 
constitution, and always in structure, the struggle will generally be more severe between them, if they come 
into competition with each other, than between the species of distinct genera" (Darwin, 1872, p.78); "As in 
each fully stocked country natural selection necessarily acts by the selected form having some advantage in 
the struggle for life over other forms, there will be a constant tendency in the improved descendants of any 
one species to supplant and exterminate in each stage of descent their predecessors and their original 
progenitor. For it should be remembered that the competition will generally be most severe between those 
forms which are most nearly related to each other in habits, constitution, and structure. Hence all the 
intermediate forms between the earlier and later states, that is between the less and more improved states of 
the same species as well as the original parent-species itself, will generally tend to become extinct" (Darwin, 
1928, p.113); "As the individuals of the same species come in all respects into the closest competition with 
each other, the struggle will generally be most severe between them; it will be almost equally severe between 
the varieties of the same species, and next in severity between the species of the same genus." (Darwin, 1872, 
p.444). 

That sympatric speciation is the expected mode of speciation by natural selection is seen by the fact that 
"The majority of authors until fairly recently considered sympatric speciation, that is, speciation without 
geographic isolation, to be the prevailing mode of speciation" (Mayr, 1970, p.256). Yet, even though this 
"idea that has been around ... since the time of Darwin, that a new species can arise without geographic 
isolation. This theory of sympatric speciation is controversial, not least because there have been few 
convincing cases" (Salleh, 2004), i.e. in animals. To be sure, there is a form of "sympatric speciation. 
...  by polyploidy-an almost instantaneous process that makes it entirely possible for a parent to belong to one 
species and its offspring to another" which is "common in plants but rare in animals." (Keeton, et al., 
1986, p.894; Solomon, et al., 1993, p.432), but this "mechanism for extremely rapid speciation" in 
which "A single generation is all that is needed to form a new, reproductively isolated species" (Solomon, 
et al., 1993, p.432)  has little, if anything to do with "The Origin of Species by Means of Natural 
Selection" (my emphasis). [to be continued] [top]

	4.	Darwin's success
It is nowadays taken for granted that Darwin's success in having his theory accepted was due to its scientific 
merit. But in fact Darwin himself, in his Origin of Species admitted that all the leading 
paleontologists were against his theory because it was not supported by the fossil evidence (Darwin, 1872, p.311, 
318, 443). Indeed, in order to save his theory from falsification, Darwin had to imagine that the fossil 
record was far more imperfect that it appeared to be (Darwin, 1872, p.311, 443). Darwin expected in his Origin 
of Species that "experienced naturalists whose minds are stocked with a multitude of facts", would reject his 
theory (Darwin, 1872, p.456). [top]

		1.	Factors in Darwinism's success
			1.	Revolt against God
The primary factor in Darwin's success was the revolt against God, that had been taking place since at least the 
Renaissance in the 16th century. Vital Christian faith in the West was steadily declining, despite evangelical 
awakenings in the 18th and early 19th centuries. The established Christian churches had come to be dominated by 
`church politicians' many of whom were probably not Christians themselves. The Church of England controlled 
Oxford and Cambridge Universities, which were effectively theological seminaries for the Anglican ministry, 
with the professorships only available to Anglican clergymen. This was bitterly resented by non-theists like T.H. 
Huxley who had to struggle to survive as a secular scientist while his clergymen scientist colleagues had the 
luxury of a secure, relatively high income from the church. The dominant belief of the age was not Biblical 
Christianity, but a Deism (or Gnosticism), where God was conceived as a far off First Cause who had little of no 
relevance for people's daily lives (except maybe at their funeral!). Most people in the 19th century continued to 
believe in God, not because of Biblical Christian theology, but because of natural theology. As Dawkins 
pointed out, it was difficult to be an "intellectually fulfilled atheist" (or agnostic) before Darwin because it was 
hard to explain non-theistically the evidence of biological design (Dawkins, 1986, p.6). So when Darwin 
provided a non-theistic interpretation of natural theology's Paley's Watchmaker, those people who were not 
sound Biblical Christians had less reason left to continue believing in God. But what Darwin did was not make it 
impossible to believe in God, but he made it easier not to believe in God (Johnson, 1992c), and those who 
wanted Darwin's escape route, took it.  [top]

		2.	Darwin's dishonesty.
			1.	Darwin is inseparable from the modern theory of evolution
In other fields of science, for example Physics or Chemistry, whether or not its founder was dishonest in 
promoting and supporting the theory that founded that field is less of a problem, because the theory can be 
relatively easily tested in a laboratory and the field is not closely with associated with the name of the 
founder. However the theory of evolution is possibly unique in this respect in that it cannot be easily (if at 
all) tested (Birch & Ehrlich, 1967; Patterson, 1978, p.70; Popper, 1978, pp.344-345; Popper, 1982, p.168); 
and therefore relies more on the personal honesty and objectivity of the founder. Moreover, the theory of 
evolution seems also to be unique in being the only scientific theory that is still so strongly identified with 
its 19th century founder. There has developed a "Darwin industry" (Gould, 1993, p.148) Darwin is 
inseparable from the modern theory of evolution "Darwin was irreplaceable ... presenting a consistent, 
ungodly ... explanation of the living world ... that no other scientist could have achieved" "Theorists often 
claim individuals are unimportant to the progress of science. Great researchers see far because they stand on 
the shoulders of others. If one slips, another will climb to take his place. So if Darwin had backed away, 
someone else would have picked up the notion that species evolve as environments eliminate animals that 
are unsuited to their surroundings, Alfred Russel Wallace being the obvious candidate. .... not much would 
have changed, it is argued. We would simply speak of Wallacism, not Darwinism. Thanks to Browne we 
can now see this notion is untenable: Darwin was irreplaceable. ... impoverished Wallace had no 
connections while Darwin was armed with powerful defenders who took control of key scientific publishing 
outlets and academic positions and ensured natural selection got the most favourable of receptions ... 
[Wallace's] decision in 1869 to renounce natural selection and claim that only a 'spirit force or deity' could 
explain the evolution of human attributes would have been calamitous for the general acceptance of natural 
selection had Wallace been its prime exponent. By contrast, Darwin never wavered through all his 
subsequent works, presenting a consistent, ungodly, rational explanation of the living world ... Thanks to 
Darwin's intellectual rigour, care for his ideas and concern for his own status, his beloved theory gained an 
acceptance that no other scientist could have achieved so quickly or thoroughly. His success may vex those 
who still refuse, for religious reasons, to accept natural selection. The rest of us have many reasons to be 
grateful." (McKie, 2002). "without Darwin ... the theory of evolution ... wouldn't have been the same" 
"Similarly, without Einstein, there would still have been something like the theory of relativity; without 
Darwin, something close to the theory of evolution. But they wouldn't have been the same theories. They 
wouldn't have been formulated in the same way or presented with the same vigor, the same force of 
persuasion. They wouldn't have had the same influence or the same consequences." (Jacob, 1997, pp.140-
141).  "no biologist has been responsible for ... drastic-modifications of the average person's worldview than 
Charles Darwin" "Many biological ideas proposed during the past 150 years stood in stark conflict with 
what everybody assumed to be true. The acceptance of these ideas required an ideological revolution. And 
no biologist has been responsible for more-and for more drastic-modifications of the average person's 
worldview than Charles Darwin. ... Remember that in 1850 virtually all leading scientists and philosophers 
were Christian men. The world they inhabited had been created by God, and as the natural theologians 
claimed, He had instituted wise laws that brought about the perfect adaptation of all organisms to one 
another and to their environment. ... Such was the thinking of Western man prior to the 1859 publication of 
on the Origin of Species. The basic principles proposed by Darwin would stand in total conflict with these 
prevailing ideas. First, Darwinism rejects all supernatural phenomena and causations. The theory of 
evolution by natural selection explains the adaptedness and diversity of the world solely materialistically. It 
no longer requires God as creator or designer .... Darwin pointed out that creation, as described in the Bible 
... was contradicted by almost any aspect of the natural world. Every aspect of the `wonderful design' so 
admired by the natural theologians could be explained by natural selection. ... Eliminating God from science 
made room for strictly scientific explanations of all natural phenomena; it gave rise to positivism; it 
produced a powerful intellectual and spiritual revolution, the effects of which have lasted to this day." 
(Mayr, 2000, pp.67-69). [top] 

			2.	Darwin falsely claimed to have never encountered before 1859 even one nnaturalist who doubted the permanence of species
Darwin claimed in his Autobiography that he "occasionally sounded not a few naturalists, and never 
happened to come across a single one who seemed to doubt about the permanence of species" 
(Darwin, in Barlow, 1958, p.124. My emphasis). Simpson, in reviewing Darwin's autobiography says 
"These are extraordinary statements" and "They cannot be literally true" because "His own grandfather, 
Erasmus Darwin, whose work Charles knew very well, was a pioneer evolutionist. Darwin was also familiar 
with the work of Lamarck, and had certainly met at least a few naturalists who had flirted with the idea of 
evolution. He actually specifies one elsewhere in the autobiography: a Robert Edmund Grant, professor at 
the University of London. Of all this Darwin says that none of these forerunners had any effect on him. 
Then, in almost the next breath, he admits that hearing evolutionary views supported and praised rather 
early in life may have favored his upholding them later." (Simpson, 1958, p.119). Moreover in one of 
Darwin's private notebooks, he admitted that there was "scarcely any novelty in my theory, only slight 
differences, the opinion of many people in conversation" (de Beer, 1960. My emphasis). Simpson 
considers the possibility that Darwin may be "consciously lying" but then rejects it out of hand: "yet Darwin 
cannot be consciously lying, and he may therefore be judged unconsciously misleading, naive, forgetful, or 
all three." But why "cannot" Darwin "be consciously lying"? Darwin wrote the bulk of his 
autobiography in 1876, when he was 67, so he can hardly be called "naive". As to "forgetful", Darwin had a 
good memory, supplemented by an extensive filing system, and was writing on scientific topics up to 1882, 
the last year of his life. There is simply no way that Darwin could have forgotten the those naturalists, like 
Grant, who had discussed the transmutation of species him, prior to writing his Origin of Species in 
1859. That leaves "unconsciously misleading," but writing an autobiography is a conscious activity. 
As we shall see there are other examples where Darwin was deliberately misleading, so there is no 
reason to make a special exception for Darwin in this case. Therefore Simpson's excuses all fail leaving his 
original consideration that Darwin was "consciously lying" as the correct one.  [top]

			3.	Darwin's plagiarism
				1.	Darwin plagiarised Wallace's theory
"SINCE THE MANUSCRIPT Wallace mailed from Ternate contained-in complete form-what is today 
known as the Darwinian theory of evolution, the date of its arrival at Down House acquires profound 
historical significance. A quartet of dates is in the running as the date on which the postrider handed 
Wallace's envelope to Parslow. The first of the four - Friday, June 4-is speculative; the second-Tuesday, 
June 8-is the day Darwin wrote Hooker that he had suddenly found the missing `keystone' of his theory; the 
third-Monday, June 14-is suggested by Darwin's `little diary'; and the fourth-Friday, June 18-is the date 
publicly advanced by Darwin himself. Wherever the chronological reality may rest, June 1858 clearly 
marked for Darwin the moment of truth. The problem is compounded by the disappearance of the Wallace 
envelope. That envelope, with its postmarks, which has been searched for in vain at the Linnean Society, the 
Royal Geographical Society, the British Museum (Natural History), the University of London, and 
elsewhere, contained irrefutable evidence of the precise date on which Darwin broke it open and read its 
contents. In all probability, it no longer exists. It has either been misplaced or, more likely, destroyed. The 
postal history of the period, the survival of a number of other Wallace letters from Ternate, and a consensus 
among philatelists is that it would take a letter from Ternate some twelve weeks to reach Down. According 
to the evidence found in Wallace's papers, he wrote out his complete theory of evolution toward the end of 
February and posted it March 9, when the first available Dutch vessel dropped anchor at Ternate. This is 
corroborated by a letter Wallace sent that same day by the same ship to Frederick Bates, the brother of 
Henry Walter Bates with whom Wallace had scoured the Amazon for species some years earlier. H. Lewis 
McKinney, a member of the University of Kansas faculty, was the first to draw attention to the Bates letter, 
which is in the possession of Wallace's grandson, Alfred John Russel Wallace. The letter, mailed from 
Ternate, bears the usual series of cancellations, showing its arrival at Singapore and transit to London via 
Southampton and then on to Leicester, where Bates lived. It arrived at Leicester June 3 and bears a 
cancellation of the Leicester post office for that date. Wallace's letter to Darwin should have arrived the 
same day as Bates', June 3, or perhaps a day or two later. `It is only reasonable to assume that Wallace's 
communication to Darwin arrived at the same time and was delivered to Darwin at Down House on 3 June 
1858, the same day as Bates' letter arrived in Leicester,' said McKinney. `If this sequence is correct, as it 
appears to be, we must ask ourselves what Darwin was doing with Wallace's paper during the two weeks 
between 4 June and 18 June (when Darwin claimed he received it).'" (Brackman A.C., "A Delicate 
Arrangement: The Strange Case of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace," Times Books: New York 
NY, 1980, pp.16-17)  [top]
			4.	Darwin proposed an impossible `test' of his theory
"If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by 
numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down." (Darwin C.R., "The 
Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection," [1872], Everyman's Library, J.M. Dent & Sons: London, 
6th Edition, 1928, reprint, p.170)
"Natural selection undoubtedly explains some adaptations, such as camouflage. The adaptation in this case, 
as well as in other famous examples of natural selection, are all simple, however. In the peppered moth, 
adaptation is simply a matter of adjusting external color to the background. The problem arises in complex 
characters, which are adapted to the environment in many interdependent respects. Darwin's explanation for 
complex adaptations is that they evolved in many small steps, each analogous to the simple evolution in the 
peppered moth; as a result, Darwin meant termed evolution "gradual." Evolution must be gradual because it 
would take a miracle for a complex organ, requiring mutations in many parts, to evolve in one sudden step. 
If each mutation arose separately, in different organisms at different times, the whole process becomes more 
probable. Darwin's "gradualist" requirement is a deep property of evolutionary theory. The Darwinian 
should be able to show for any organ that it could, at least in principle, have evolved in many small steps, 
with each step being advantageous. If exceptions are found, it would cast serious doubt on the entire theory. 
In Darwin's words, "if it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly 
have been formed by numerous successive slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down." 
Darwin argued that all known organs indeed could have evolved in small steps. He took examples of 
complex adaptations and showed how these examples could have evolved through intermediate stages. In 
cases such as the eye, these intermediates can be illustrated by analogies with living species; in other cases, 
they can only be imagined. Darwin had to show only that the intermediates could possibly have existed. His 
critics had the more difficult task: they had to show that the intermediates could not have existed. It is very 
difficult to prove negative statements. " (Ridley M., "Evolution," [1993], Blackwell: Cambridge MA, 
Second Edition, 1996, Third Printing, 1999, p.342)  [top]
		3.	Darwin's use of rhetoric
"You speak of finding a flaw in my hypothesis & this shows you do not understand its nature. It is a mere 
rag of an hypothesis with as many flaw & holes as sound parts. ---- My question is whether the rag is worth 
anything?" (Darwin C.R., Letter to T.H. Huxley, 2 June, 1859, Burkhardt F.H. & Smith S., eds., "The 
Correspondence of Charles Darwin,". Cambridge University Press: Cambridge UK, 1985; Vol. 7, p.301)    [top]

		4.	Darwin's obsessiveness
Darwin's biographers have noted his obsessiveness. For example Clark refers to the young Darwin's "near-
obsession" with collecting beetles (Clark, 1985, p.8). In the same context, Clark mentions as a "trait of Darwin's 
life" an "all-consuming determination ... that tied him to species work for two decades before The Origin 
emerged" (Clark, 1985, p.8). His wife's biographer comments on Darwin's being "dogged by chronic illness" 
being caused by "a combination of many causes, psychological and physical," including being "driven by a 
powerful, obsessive need to search out the truth" (Healey, 2001, p.170) Hitching notes Darwin's "four-volume 
classification of minuscule barnacles ... known as cirripedia" which "was to occupy him, with almost obsessive 
irrelevance, for eight years" (Hitching, 1982, p.244). Professor of Psychiatry Michael Fitzgerald has proposed 
that Darwin's obsessiveness may have been a form of autism, Asperger's syndrome (BBC, 2004a). While it may be 
argued that obsessiveness is a normal, even necessary part of science, if Darwin's obsessiveness caused him to 
overestimate the relative importance of the natural selection of micromutations, which he later virtually admitted 
(Darwin, 1871, p.92) and helped him to persuade others of his distorted view of reality by his sheer dogged 
persistence, then that is an important consideration in understanding the reasons for the origin and acceptance of 
Darwin's theory.  [top]

		5.	Darwin's manipulation of people
		6.	Darwin's manipulation of the media
See quote by Darwinist historian Peter Bowler, which shows how Darwinism originally gained power by 
"the politics of science" (not by Darwin's science being right - T.H. Huxley, Darwin's main public 
supporter, was "a pseudo-Darwinian who had little real sympathy for natural selection or the Darwinian 
approach to the history of life" - i.e. he did not even think Darwin's science was right!), and they are now 
maintaining power by the same "politics of science". .... 1) "It was through ... success in the politics of 
science that Darwinism came to dominate British biology"; 2) "Darwinian[s] ... gained the day because they 
employed these tactics ["evade objections or deflect them ... present[ing] a united front, never falling out in 
public even when they have disagreements"] and thereby outmaneuvered both the anti-evolutionists and 
those who wanted to found rival schools of evolutionism"; and 3) "Their PR skills were helped by the 
ineptness of their opponents". IOW, Darwinism won, not because it's science was right (as we saw even 
T.H. Huxley did not believe that), but because "skills in the area of public relations help a theory to gain 
acceptance": 

"The next chapter will show that Huxley is now seen more as a pseudoDarwinian who had little real 
sympathy for natural selection or the Darwinian approach to the history of life. Huxley was an important 
figure not because he forced through the arguments for a Darwinian view of evolution but because his 
maneuvering behind the scenes ensured that the evolutionists who regarded Darwin as their figurehead were 
able to take over the British scientific community. It was through persuasion and through success in the 
politics of science that Darwinism came to dominate British biology. There are some scientists today who 
resent the claim that skills in the area of public relations help a theory to gain acceptance. They feel that 
objective evidence in favor of the theory must be the dominant factor. Yet sociologists who study the 
acceptance of new ideas within the modern scientific community have shown that it is to some extent a 
social process (Gilbert and Mulkay 1984). David Hull (1978) has suggested that the image presented to the 
world by the supporters of a new theory may be very important, especially when there are apparently valid 
arguments both for and against the theory. The advantage will be gained by the side that presents its case 
most effectively, stressing the positive aspects of its own position and undermining the influence of its 
opponents. The successful group will evade objections or deflect them by making concessions that do not 
threaten its basic principles. Its members will present a united front, never falling out in public even when 
they have disagreements over how the theory should be applied. Biologists loyal to the Darwinian symbol 
gained the day because they employed these tactics and thereby outmaneuvered both the antievolutionists 
and those who wanted to found rival schools of evolutionism. Their PR skills were helped by the ineptness 
of their opponents, who were in any case handicapped by the need to rethink their position in response to 
the Darwinian threat. To succeed in the game of scientific politics, Darwin had to play his cards very 
carefully. " (Bowler P.J., "The Non-Darwinian Revolution: Reinterpreting a Historical Myth," The Johns 
Hopkins University Press: Baltimore MD, 1988, pp.68-69) [top]
		7.	Darwin's manipulation of science
		8.	Darwinism's unfalsifiability
		9.	Lack of naturalistic alternatives

		10.	Bandwagon effect
A major factor in the success of Darwin's theory was the "bandwagon effect." Darwin's theory swept through the 
scientific world so rapidly that it created a `bandwagon effect' and quickly became an orthodoxy (Johnson, 
1993b, p.48). So irresistible was its tide that even prestigious scientists like Harvard's Louis Agassiz, 
became instant has-beens when they failed to join the movement (Johnson, 1993b, pp.48,182; Gould, 1983, p.108). 
Thereafter biologists and paleontologists became so committed to the new way of thinking that the only 
evidence that was sought, and deemed worthy of publication, was that which supported the theory; that 
which didn't was discarded as failures (Johnson, 1993b, pp.48-49). For example, the evidence of gaps in 
the fossil record were explained away as imperfections of the fossil record and stasis was ignored as 
"no data" (Gould & Eldredge, 1977, p.116). As Eldredge confessed, "We paleontologists have said that the 
history of life supports that interpretation [of "gradual adaptive change"], all the while really knowing 
that it does not" (Eldredge, 1985, p.144). [top]

		11.	Exclusion of rivals

5.	Darwinism
	1.	An ideology
"Modern thought is most dependent on the influence of Charles Darwin ... Many biological ideas proposed 
during the past 150 years stood in stark conflict with what everybody assumed to be true. The acceptance of 
these ideas required an ideological revolution. And no biologist has been responsible for more-and for more 
drastic-modifications of the average person's worldview than Charles Darwin." (Mayr E.W., "Darwin's 
Influence on Modern Thought," Scientific American, Vol. 283, No. 1, pp.67-71, July 2000, pp.67-68. 
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CreationEvolutionDesign/message/12776) [top]

6.	Eclipse of Darwinism
It is probably not generally realised that Darwin's theory of variation and natural selection, from the 1890's 
until the 1920s, was in what Julian Huxley called "the eclipse of Darwinism" (Huxley, 1942, p.22ff; Bowler, 
1983, pp.4-5ff; Bowler, 1989, p.246ff; Weiner, 1994, p.67; Livingstone 1987, pp.140-141). [top]

	1.	Bateson (1861-1920)
One of the leaders in this "eclipse of Darwinism" was British pioneering geneticist William Bateson (Huxley, 
1942, pp.23-24; Bowler, 1983, pp.185ff; Bowler, 1989, p.256ff), who in fact invented the word "genetics" 
(Gould, 2002, p.398). In his 1914 inaugural presidential address at the British Association for the 
Advancement of Science, held in Melbourne, Australia, Bateson declared, "We go to Darwin for his 
incomparable collection of facts. We would fain emulate his scholarship, his width and his power of 
exposition, but to us he speaks no more with philosophical authority. We read his scheme of evolution as we 
would those of Lucretius or of Lamarck. ... In face of what we now know of the distribution of variability in 
nature, the scope claimed for natural selection in determining the fixity of species must be greatly reduced. ... 
Shorn of these pretensions the doctrine of the survival of favoured races is a truism, helping scarcely at all to 
account for the diversity of species" (Bateson, 1914; Mayr, 1982, p.547; Dawkins, 1986, p.305). [to be 
continued]  [top]

7.	Neo-Darwinism
	1.	Based on irrelevant mathematical theory
"I found, for instance, Lewontin of Harvard saying about 1974 that population genetics had contributed 
absolutely nothing to evolutionary theory [e.g. Lewontin R.C., "The Genetic Basis of Evolutionary 
Change," Columbia University Press: New York NY, 1974, p.189]. He said this in a fat book that he wrote 
at the time, and he said it several times in the plainest possible language-and italicised! I was very struck 
with this and I gathered up 4 or 5 reviews of Lewontin's book by specialists in the field and I discovered 
that not a single one of them ever mentioned this. He was stating that population genetics hadn't achieved a 
thing, and they just didn't seem to want to discuss that. It was as though the College of Cardinals had heard 
the Pope muttering that God is dead and they didn't want to go into that subject at all." (Macbeth N., 
"Darwinism: A time for funerals," Robert Briggs Associates: San Francisco CA, 1982, p.10)

"I found, for instance, Lewontin of Harvard saying about 1974 that population genetics had contributed 
absolutely nothing to evolutionary theory [e.g. Lewontin R.C., "The Genetic Basis of Evolutionary 
Change," Columbia University Press: New York NY, 1974, p.189]. He said this in a fat book that he wrote 
at the time, and he said it several times in the plainest possible language-and italicised! I was very struck 
with this and I gathered up 4 or 5 reviews of Lewontin's book by specialists in the field and I discovered 
that not a single one of them ever mentioned this. He was stating that population genetics hadn't achieved a 
thing, and they just didn't seem to want to discuss that. It was as though the College of Cardinals had heard 
the Pope muttering that God is dead and they didn't want to go into that subject at all." (Macbeth N., 
"Darwinism: A time for funerals," Robert Briggs Associates: San Francisco CA, 1982, p.10)  [top]

	2.	Achieved success by eliminating rivals
"The primary problem with the [modern evolutionary] synthesis is that its makers established natural 
selection as the director of adaptive evolution by eliminating competing explanations, not by providing 
evidence that natural selection among 'random' mutations could, or did, account for observed adaptation 
(Box 2). Mayr remarked, 'As these non-Darwinian explanations were refuted during the synthesis ... natural 
selection automatically became the universal explanation of evolutionary change (together with chance 
factors).' Depriving the synthesis of plausible alternatives, which seemed such a triumph, in fact sowed the 
seeds of its faults." (Leigh, 1999, p.495).

"Mayr's ideas trace back to Darwin's 1859 publication, "On the Origin of Species," which established the 
concept of natural selection - better known as survival of the fittest. Over long periods of time, he theorized, 
small changes accumulated until entirely new species were established. ... Most researchers thought that the 
process of accumulated changes in individual genes required far too long to occur to account for the great 
variety of species now present. They argued instead that the creation of new species must come from a 
simultaneous, wholesale genetic mutation, or "systemic mutation," that led to the instantaneous emergence 
of "hopeful monsters" sharply different from their parents. Those "monsters" that had adaptive 
characteristics survived and became new species. Those that did not withered away. ... The leading 
proponent of this idea was geneticist Richard Goldschmidt. In 1939 ... Mayr ... traveled to Yale to attend a 
lecture by Goldschmidt. What he heard so offended him that he vowed, in his own words, to "eliminate" 
those ideas "from the panorama of evolutionary controversies." (Maugh, 2005a) [top]

	3.	Scopes trial
We have seen that Darwin achieved his success by being "slippery" and employing "a flexible strategy which 
is not to be reconciled with even average intellectual integrity" (Darlington, 1959a, p.60). So too Darwin's 
modern disciples have carried on their master's tactics of not welcoming "the critics to an academic forum for 
open debate, ... to confront the best critical arguments," but rather "to caricature them as straw men," relying 
"on the dishonorable methods of power politics," by employing "propaganda and legal barriers to prevent 
relevant questions from being asked" and "enforcing rules of reasoning that allow no alternative to the 
official story." (Johnson, 2000, p.141).

For example, in the 1925 Scopes `monkey' trial, even though "Christian fundamentalism" (i.e. Biblical 
literal creationism), was not "technically an issue in the case," since "The Tennessee statute did not 
mandate the teaching of fundamentalism or of any other theory that might explain the origin and 
subsequent diversification of life on earth," and "merely barred the teaching of evolution" (Sisson, 2004, 
p.94). But the evolution side's lawyer, Clarence Darrow, "wished to make fundamentalism the issue," and by 
unscrupulous legal manoeuvring, "William Jennings Bryan agreed to be questioned by Darrow on his personal 
interpretation of the Bible ... only if Darrow agreed to be questioned on the evidence for evolution-and 
the judge agreed that Bryan could question Darrow after Darrow questioned Bryan. ... But after his 
famous examination of Bryan, Darrow unexpectedly changed Scopes' plea to guilty, which closed the 
evidence and made it impossible for Bryan to call Darrow to the stand to question him on evolution. 
Darrow could easily have changed the plea before his examination of Bryan; the fact that Darrow 
changed the plea only after he conducted his examination indicates that his intention all along was to use 
Bryan to challenge Christian fundamentalism and then to escape any challenge to the theory of 
unintelligent evolution. The result was that in the Scopes Monkey Trial, scientists presented their case 
for evolution without any challenge to the merits of their arguments that the data they offered was 
evidence for its truth." (Sisson, 2004, p.94).

The textbook that evolutionists were fighting to have retained in schools to teach evolution, which 
creationists were objecting to, was G.W. Hunter's A Civic Biology (1914), and its companion Hunter's 
Laboratory Problems in Civic Biology (1916), which taught the Social Darwinist "`science' of eugenics" 
that "divided humanity into five races and ranked them in terms of superiority, concluding with `the highest 
type of all, the Caucasians, represented by the civilized white inhabitants of Europe and America'" (Sisson, 
2004, p.94). "A Civic Biology taught schoolchildren that the failure to apply eugenics forced the state 
of New York to bear the cost of `over a hundred feeble-minded, alcoholic, immoral, or criminal persons' and 
resulted in the births of `33 sexually immoral, 24 confirmed drunkards, 3 epileptics, and 143 feeble minded," 
and claimed that "Hundreds of families such as those described above exist today, spreading disease, 
immorality, and crime to all parts of this country... [T]hese families have become parasitic on society'" and 
recommended "that society ... prevent... intermarriage and the possibilities of perpetuating such a low and 
degenerate race.'" (Hunter, 1914, pp.196,262-263; Sisson, 2004, pp.95-96). "The lab book ... asks students to use 
inheritance charts `[t]o determine some means of bettering, physically and mentally, the human race,' so that 
students can answer the concluding question: `Should feeble-minded persons be allowed to marry?' A `Note to 
teachers' says that `[t]he child is at the receptive age and is emotionally open to the serious lessons here 
involved.'" (Hunter, 1916, p.182; Sisson, 2004, p.96). [to be continued] [top]
 
8.	Post-Darwinism 
	1.	Macroevolution not microevolution 
"Microevolution within the species proceeds by accumulation of micromutations and occupation of the 
available ecological niches by the preadapted mutants. Microevolution, especially geographic variation, 
adapts the species to the different conditions existing in the available range of distribution. Microevolution 
does not lead beyond the confines of the species, and the typical products of microevolution, the geographic 
races, are not incipient species. There is no such category as incipient species. Species and the higher 
categories originate in single macroevolutionary steps as completely new genetic systems. The genetical 
process which is involved consists of a repatterning of the chromosomes, which results in a new genetic 
system. The theory of the genes and of the accumulation of micromutants by selection has to be ruled out of 
this picture." (Goldschmidt R.B., "The Material Basis of Evolution," [1940], Yale University Press: New 
Haven CT, 1982, reprint, p.296)
"The levels to which these conclusions apply without modification are approximately those discussed as 
macro-evolution (under that or an equivalent term) by neozoologists and biologists. On still higher levels, 
those of what is here called "mega-evolution", the inferences might still apply, but caution is enjoined, 
because here essentially continuous transitional sequences are not merely rare, but are virtually absent. 
These large discontinuities are less numerous, so that paleontological examples of their origin should also 
be less numerous; but their absence is so nearly universal that it cannot, offhand, be imputed entirely to 
chance and does require some attempt at special explanation, as has been felt by most paleontologists." 
(Simpson G.G., "Tempo and Mode in Evolution," [1944], Columbia University Press: New York NY, 
1949, Third printing, pp.105-106) 
"Geneticists can study the gradual increase of favored genes within populations of fruit flies in laboratory 
bottles. Naturalists can record the steady replacement of light moths by dark moths as industrial soot 
blackens the trees of Britain. Orthodox neo-Darwinians extrapolate these even and continuous changes to 
the most profound structural transitions in the history of life: by a long series of insensibly graded 
intermediate steps, birds are linked to reptiles, fish with jaws to their jawless ancestors. Macroevolution 
(major structural transition) is nothing more than microevolution (flies in bottles) extended. If black moths 
can displace white ones in a century, then reptiles can become birds in a few million years by the smooth 
and sequential summation of countless changes. Change of gene frequencies in local populations is an 
adequate model for all evolutionary processes-or so the current orthodoxy states." (Gould S.J., "The Return 
of Hopeful Monsters," Natural History, Vol. 86, No. 6, June-July 1977, pp.23-30, p.23) 
"As a Darwinian, I wish to defend Goldschmidt's postulate that macroevolution is not simply 
microevolution extrapolated, and that major structural transitions can occur rapidly without a smooth series 
of intermediate stages. I shall proceed by discussing three questions: (1) can a reasonable story of 
continuous change be constructed for all macroevolutionary events? (my answer shall be no); (2) are 
theories of abrupt change inherently anti-Darwinian? (I shall argue that some are and some aren't); (3) do 
Goldschmidt's hopeful monsters represent the archetype of apostasy from Darwinism, as his critics have 
long maintained? (my answer, again, shall be no)." (Gould S.J., "The Return of Hopeful Monsters," Natural 
History, Vol. 86, No. 6, June-July 1977, pp.23-30, p.24)
"Orthodox neo-Darwinians extrapolate these even and continuous changes to the most profound structural 
transitions in the history of life: by a long series of insensibly graded intermediate steps, birds are linked to 
reptiles, fish with jaws to their jawless ancestors. Macroevolution (major structural transition) is nothing 
more than microevolution (flies in bottles) extended. If black moths can displace white moths in a century, 
then reptiles can become birds in a few million years by the smooth and sequential summation of countless 
changes. The shift of gene frequencies in local populations is an adequate model for all evolutionary 
processes - or so the current orthodoxy states." (Gould S.J., "The Return of the Hopeful Monster," in "The 
Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History," [1980], Penguin: London, 1990, reprint, pp.155-156)
"The changes within a population have been termed microevolution, and they can indeed be accepted as a 
consequence of shifting gene frequencies. Changes above the species level-involving the origin of new 
species and the establishment of higher taxonomic patterns- are known as macroevolution. The central 
question of the Chicago conference was whether the mechanisms underlying microevolution can be 
extrapolated to explain the phenomena of macroevolution. At the risk of doing violence to the positions of 
some of the people at the meeting, the answer can be given as a clear, No. What is not so clear, however, is 
whether microevolution is totally decoupled from macroevolution: the two can more probably be seen as a 
continuum with a notable overlap." (Lewin R., "Evolutionary-Theory Under Fire: An historic conference in 
Chicago challenges the four-decade long dominance of the Modern Synthesis," Science, Vol. 210, pp.883-
887, 21 November 1980, p.883)
"The strict version, with its emphasis on copious, minute, random variation molded with excruciating but 
persistent slowness by natural selection, also implied that all events of large-scale evolution 
(macroevolution) were the gradual, accumulated product of innumerable steps, each a minute adaptation to 
changing conditions within a local population. This "extrapolationist" theory denied any independence to 
macroevolution and interpreted all large-scale evolutionary events (origin of basic designs, long-term 
trends, patterns of extinction and faunal turnover) as slowly accumulated microevolution (the study of 
small-scale changes within species)." (Gould S.J., "Prologue," in "Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further 
Reflections in Natural History", [1983], Penguin: London, 1986, reprint, p.13) 
"Needless to say, the conflict between punctualism and gradualism is not the only macroevolutionary issue 
that cannot be decided by logical inference from microevolutionary principles. Consider, for example, the 
question of rates of morphological evolution. Three groups of crossopterygian fishes flourished during the 
Devonian. The lungfishes (Dipnoi) changed little for hundreds of millions of years and remain as relics. The 
coelacanths became highly successful in the open ocean until the Cretaceous, then declined and stagnated, 
leaving only the relictual Latimeria. The rhipidistians, in contrast, evolved into the amphibians, reptiles, 
and, finally, birds and mammals. Models to explain divergent rates of morphological evolution must 
incorporate factors other than microevolutionary principles, including rates of speciation and the 
environmental and biotic conditions that may account for successions of morphological change in some but 
not other lineages." (Stebbins G.L. & Ayala F.J., "Is a New Evolutionary Synthesis Necessary?" Science, 
Vol. 213, 28 August 1981, pp.967-971, p.971)
"Distinctive macroevolutionary theories and models have been advanced concerning such issues as rates of 
morphological evolution, patterns of species extinctions, and historical factors regulating taxonomic 
diversity. As long as these theories and models are compatible with the theories and laws of population 
biology, the decision as to which one among alternative hypotheses is correct cannot be reached by recourse 
to microevolutionary principles. Such a decision must rather be based on appropriate tests with the use of 
macroevolutionary evidence. Thus, macroevolution is an autonomous field of evolutionary study and, in this 
epistemologically very important sense, macroevolution is decoupled from microevolution." (Stebbins G.L. 
& Ayala F.J., "Is a New Evolutionary Synthesis Necessary?" Science, Vol. 213, 28 August 1981, pp.967-
971, p.971) 
"Much confusion results from the fact that a single term- "evolution"-is used to designate processes that 
may have little or nothing in common. A shift in the relative numbers of dark and light moths in a 
population is called evolution, and so is the creative process that produced the cell, the multicellular 
organism, the eye, and the human mind. The semantic implication is that evolution is fundamentally a single 
process, and Darwinists enthusiastically exploit that implication as a substitute for scientific evidence. Even 
the separation of evolution into its "micro" and "macro" varieties- which Darwinists generally resist-implies 
that all the creative processes involved in life comprise a single, two-part phenomenon that will be 
adequately understood when we discover a process that makes new species from existing ones. Possibly this 
is the case, but more probably it is not. The vocabulary of Darwinism inherently limits our comprehension 
of the difficulties by misleadingly covering them with the blanket term "evolution." (Johnson P.E., "Darwin 
on Trial," [1991], InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove IL, Second edition, 1993, pp.69-70)   [top]

9.	Anti-Darwinism [top]